E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mercurial mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips tools unix vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs writing

Stuff I Use

Akismet, bitbucket, del.icio.us, Django, Emacs, FreeBSD, Git, jQuery, LaunchBar, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, Review Board, S3, SQLite, TextMate, Ubuntu Linux

Spam Report

At least 95840 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Is Akismet broken again?

In the past 24 hours I've seen a wave of comment spam resembling the late August outage. Mostly porn spam. Is it just me? I'm using the Akismet API from my homebrew code (negatives are simply rejected), but maybe this is a sign that I should start using the feedback part of their API to report false negatives.

This also gets me thinking about the need for an Akismet-like service that is run cooperatively, with multiple servers to avoid the single-point-of-failure problem. (And maybe more liberal licensing.) I think Akismet is cool; it's just impossible not to think about The Next Cool Thing once the Current Thing starts giving you trouble.

Update, 2006-09-18: Akismet does seem to be working again now. I still just trash any comment it thinks is spam (along with displaying a notice), but I added some logging to track the action better.

Thursday, September 7th, 2006
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2 comments

Some related posts: Comment Spam Stats • Comment Spam • Spam, del.icio.us spam • Akismet anti-comment-spam • More on "Splogs" • Fixing Web Spam • Google blog search
• Comment from Heliologue , 6 days later

It's not just you. I'm having the same problem. But it's apparently not so severe or widespread as the August outage, because I haven't seen very many people talking about it.

• Comment from Paul , 6 days later

Well, I'm glad it's not just me -- thanks. It may not be an outage at all, but the beginning of serious gaming by the spammers.

It's foul stuff, too!

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